Dead Snow (Dod Sno) 2009

Granted this is not technically apocalyptic, post apocalyptic or dystopian, but it does contain zombies which leads me to believe it is worthy of a mention on Ablogalypse!

Dead Snow has to be one of my favourite films of all time. Grossly under-rated as far as horror films go, it combines comedy with massive amounts of gore and truly has one of the best zombie vs human fight scenes in the history of horror. The premise of the film is pretty simple – 8 Norwegian students head up into the mountains for a vacation in a remote cabin where they discover a pot of Nazi gold. The Nazis are not happy at having had their gold stolen and therefore rise from the dead to reclaim their precious horde. Mayhem ensues with the students slowly being bumped off in different ways including beheading, being blown up and death through extraction of intestines.

On that note – this film has a LOT of intestines. I am pretty sure the props department bought them in bulk because they feature prominently at least 4 times throughout the film. The director also did not skimp on the blood and gore- we have spurting arteries, someone being ripped into pieces, self amputation, eye gouging and heads getting squished. Pretty awesome.

Dead Snow is subtitled. Although this might put some people off and does on occasion lead to a joke or comment getting lost in the translation I personally feel that the subtitles add to the awesomeness of the film and certainly added to my Norwegian vocabulary (it turns out lots of Norwegian words are just the same as the English equivalent only with an accent) The characters are excellent. Outside of Norway the actors are pretty much unheard of, however they do a fantastic job – especially Lasse Valdal as Vegard and Stig Frode Henriksen as Roy – although to be honest all the main actors are good. The characters are all pretty cool, we have Erland – the slightly gross, geeky film-reference guy who somehow manages to pull Chris (a really hot girl) in the privvy – oh yeah – did I mention there is a toilet sex scene? There is Martin who is training to become a doctor but is phobic of blood and has to amputate his own arm with a chainsaw when he is bitten by a zombie and his girlfriend Hanna who has fantastic dreadlocks and murders a crow with her bare hands. There is Roy who is a pretty pervy ‘lad’ with a terrible sense of humor and Liv, a friend of Hanna, as well as Vegard (my favorite character) who kicks some serious zombie ass while looking for his (dead) girlfriend Sara who disappeared on the way up to the cabin.

Dead Snow was nominated for 4 ‘Scream Awards’ including ‘best fight-to-the-death scene’ and ‘most memorable mutilation’ which says a lot and I have never laughed so much at a film in my life* The comedy is brilliant and often quite tongue in cheek – reference is made to the amount of horror films that start off with some unsuspecting students holidaying in a remote cabin with no phone signal – and the primary fight scene is worth at least a couple of extra viewings.

If you have a spare few hours give this film a watch. If you don’t have a few hours then spare 5 minutes and watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfSbcL1G5aI which is the fight scene of the century! Considering the budget for the film the director has done wonders and the gruesomeness of the action is splendid. I would rate Dead Snow 9/10 any day although many of my friends have been skeptical at first, most** have really enjoyed it and were surprised how good it actually is!

*anecdote – the first time I watched this film was in my 4th year of university – I was in my room with my headphones in and it turned out I was laughing so loudly that my housemate had to come in to check I wasn’t having a seizure.

** Paul hated it, but that is unsurprising considering how much he dislikes gore!